Posts Tagged ‘Prop 65’

Environment roundup

  • Coming to other towns soon: new stormwater regs ban car wash fundraisers at schools in Arlington, Va. [ArlNow]
  • Krugman hides the ball on coal-fired utility regs [David Henderson]
  • Coming in September: book on Chevron/Ecuador case by Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s Paul M. Barrett [Business Roundtable]
  • Simplified narrative of “business versus environmental regulation” obscures so much [Tim Carney, Washington Examiner]
  • Environmental disclosure panel from Vermont Law School “Disclosure Debates” [video, summary by Caitlin Stanton for VLR’s Environmental Health, links to all videos, background]
  • California: “Attorney General Posts 2013 Proposition 65 Settlement Numbers” [Cal Biz Lit]
  • “Silent Spring at 50: The False Crises of Rachel Carson” [Cato panel with Andrew Morriss, Richard Tren]

Environmental roundup

March 27 roundup

  • “Stupid Warning Shows Up on Leprechaun Hat” [Lowering the Bar, California Prop 65]
  • Lawyers eager to sue over Malaysia Air disaster but first someone has to find the plane [ABA Journal, Bloomberg]
  • Among the many accomplishments of distinguished economist (and total mensch) Murray Weidenbaum: introduction of White House regulatory review [Thom Lambert, David Henderson, Russ Roberts]
  • Quicker but not ultimately cheaper than an appeal: “Losing Plaintiff Hits Defendant With a Truck” [Lowering the Bar]
  • Feds’ Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) mulls idea “that the government involve itself in the lives of obese people by sending them regular text messages.” [Baylen Linnekin]
  • Posner: judge below “should have smelled a rat” on lawyer’s “shenanigans” [Alison Frankel/Reuters, ABA Journal]
  • “Connecticut chimp attack victim seeks right to sue state” [Reuters, earlier]

Environmental roundup

  • Behind costly EPA crackdown on wood-burning stoves, a whiff of sweetheart lawsuits? [Larry Bell]
  • Reminder: California’s Prop 65 doesn’t actually improve public health, makes lawyers rich, and harasses business [Michael Marlow, WSJ]
  • “What I learned from six months of GMO research: None of it matters” [Nathanael Johnson, Grist]
  • Eminent domain threatens store owner in Fire Island’s Saltaire [NYP]
  • In case you haven’t seen this one: chemical content of all-natural foods [James Kennedy Monash]
  • “The court ordered that the county pay the turtles’ attorneys fees.” [Dan Lewis, Now I Know]
  • “On the government’s books, the switch [from steel to aluminum in Ford’s new F-150 pickup] is a winner because MPG goes up.” [William Baldwin, Forbes]

Environmental roundup

“Five train wrecks of information disclosure law”

That was the title of the talk I gave Friday at a panel on food and product labeling law as part of a stimulating symposium put on by the Vermont Law Review at Vermont Law School in South Royalton, Vt. I drew on a number of different sources, but especially two relatively recent articles: Omri Ben-Shahar and Curt Schneider, “The Failure of Mandated Disclosure,” U. Penn. Law Review (2011), and Kesten C. Green and J. Scott Armstrong, “Evidence on the Effects of Mandatory Disclaimers in Advertising”, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, Fall 2012. I was able to bring in examples ranging from patent marking law to Prop 65 in California to pharmaceutical patient package inserts, as well as the durable phenomenon of labels, disclosures, and disclaimers going unread even by very sophisticated consumers.

My talk was well received, and I think I might adapt and expand it in future into a full-length speech for audiences on failures of consumer protection law.

On rubber worms: “Not for human consumption”

This year’s Wacky Warning Labels contest has reached the finalist stage. Others that made the cut: “Wash hands after using” on a common extension cord, a Prop 65 (California) warning on a box of matches advising that they may produce combustion by-products, and a warning on a pedometer that the maker will not be liable for any injuries to runners using the device. [Bob Dorigo Jones]

More: David Henderson on “warning pollution.”

Environment roundup

Prop 65: how serious are Gov. Brown’s reforms?

Not very, fears Bruce Nye at Cal Biz Lit, who notes that “The Chanler Group, the self-described ‘Largest Proposition 65 Citizen Enforcement Law Firm,’ wasted no time in announcing its support for the Governor’s proposals.” Prop 65, of course, is the famous California enactment under which an army of bounty-hunters have set forth to file suits and collect settlements from California businesses for failing to warn of the carcinogenic or mutagenic ingredients in hundreds of common products, from matches (which emit carbon monoxide) to brass knobs to roasted coffee to grilled chicken to billiard cue chalk. Gov. Brown’s reforms omit several stronger recommendations, such as “moving the burden of proof to the plaintiff to show that exposures exceed the applicable no significant risk level (‘NSRL’) or maximum allowable dose level (‘MADL’).”

Most importantly, would the private enforcer bar support Assembly Member Gatto’s AB 227, allowing a company receiving a 60 day notice to avoid prosecution by curing the violation within 14 days? Or better still, Cal Biz Lit’s proposal to allow sixty days to cure violations?

Those measures would be real reform.

More: Amanda Robert, Legal NewsLine.